Kitchen

The top of the house is dedicated to a dining area and a kitchen outfitted with steel-topped cabinets from Sanwa Company.

This sleek kitchen in the renovated Dolce and Burnham Residence hits warm notes with red lacquered cabinetry, cypress woodwork, and a leafy backyard vista.

Omer Arbel, the creative director at industrial design firm Bocci, was given three parameters when he began designing a home for his colleague Randy Bishop: Create a “profound” connection between the internal and external spaces; build only one level; and, most crucially, utilize a wealth of 100-year-old beams salvaged from a series of warehouses owned by Bishop’s ancestors.

The budget was nearly as tight as the space in this cheerful renovation of a 516-square-foot flat in Bratislava. The centerpiece of Lukáš Kordík’s new kitchen is the cabinetry surrounding the sink, a feat he managed by altering the facing and pulls of an off-the-rack Ikea system. The laminate offers a good punch of blue, and in modernist fashion, Kordík forwent door handles in favor of cutouts. “I wanted the kitchen to be one simple block of color without any additional design,” he says.

A mosaic tile wall softens the laboratory-like effect of the glossy kitchen cabinets.

Nicolas Gervais designed the pendant lights above the kitchen island, which was designed by Plasse and built by woodworker Stéphane Bilodeau.

The kitchen takes on a gallery feel. “I’ve got art on the kitchen counter. I really want to say to people, ‘Don’t take art so seriously,’” says Montague.

The natural and warm material palette creates coziness and warmth within the space.

For the kitchen, Tyler hired David Restorick, a furniture maker and friend, to build an island for storage and to wrap Ikea cabinets with oak for a customized look. He also built a staircase that doubles as display space for Tyler’s vast collection of colorful cookware by the likes of Finel, Copco, Cathrineholm, Jens Quistgaard, and Stig Lindberg.

A palette of wood, concrete, and painted brick forms a neutral backdrop for Kathryn Tyler’s vintage treasures, including a $30 dining table, $3 poster, and a set of 1950s Carl Jacobs Jason chairs she snagged on eBay for $400.

The refrigerator is Sub-Zero, the cooktop and hood are Viking, and the oven is Miele.

Modern cabinet finger pulls in bright and shiny chrome dot the drawers in this sleek kitchen in Venice, California.

Hawkins removed walls and swapped outdated storage for floor-to-ceiling African mahogany cabinetry.

A translucent glass backsplash in the kitchen lets light into the bedroom.

Repainting isn't necessary to get new life out of old building materials—scraping paint off can provide an entirely new aesthetic that still speaks to an element's history and materiality.

Planning more storage was critical. “We used custom fir plywood doors to make the Ikea cabinets under the marble countertops special,” Lexie says of the kitchen. Joining simple white chairs around the dining table are red Tripp Trapp high chairs from Stokke—the same model Casper had as a child.

For this Swedish kitchen, an extra-thin slab of Carrara marble was used for the countertop and backsplash so that it would recede into the space, not overwhelm it. The room is also outfitted with IKEA cabinets painted a serene powder blue—adding a vintage vibe, and a high-low sense of style.

Built-in kitchen cabinets and a monolithic island help keep the space uncluttered. The wall ovens are from Gaggenau.